Think the really old games that would run too fast on modern machines would still be running way too fast on these.

you can search google and find software that will consume 99% of all your CPU cores so as to leave very little time for your old game resulting in it running slower 😀 of course your whole computer runs notably slower too.

Toshiba laptops i've used have a 'low' processor setting in the BIOS which simply halves the MHz, which is actually quite convenient (But this is not automatic). That's the only good official underclocking for those I know 🙁

I tried running Wing Commander on my Pentium 3 and it was unplayable because it was way too fast. Back in the DOS days there were a number 'PC slow-down' utilities available for such games, specifically for games made to run on 8086 machines. I tried an exhaustive search but couldn't find any. DOSBOX was the solution since it offers control of the clock cycles and thus I was able to enjoy Wing Commander at proper speed.

For old machines I used to disable both L1 and L2 caches in bios, if possible.

this is so confusing

you'd underclock your cpu? that's the weirdest thing every, why wouldn't the game just run on it's regular speed? it's so old that it can only run at the speed the computer is going? crazy

Being old has nothing to do with it. It's how the game was programmed.

🤣

wouldn't the game being old have something to do with how it's programmed?

that's crazy

they don't have emulators to solve those clock rate problems?

abyss should stop posting under different names.

who's abyss?

someone who invented your posting style 😀

wouldn't the game being old have something to do with how it's programmed?

No, people just program with limited horizon from time to time. Same reason for the famous y2k bug 😀

In the case of WC3 they tried to squeeze out as much power as they could from the system.

they don't have emulators to solve those clock rate problems?

huh? At that time, no they didn'T have emulators that could emulate fro them how fast a system could run a decade later...
And yes, today we have emulators for that, for example Dosbox and even with that yor game could run way too fast on higher machines and you must "underclock" Dosbox with the cycles command...

someone who invented your posting style

Haha 😀

Does Wing Commander 3 really have the same problems as WC1&2? I suppose I've never run the game on super fast hardware, to my knowledge. It runs really nicely on a PPro@233 however. Not too fast.

WC3 runs rather awful in SVGA on 486 level CPUs though. That's what I originally played it on. A 486DX2/50 with a CL5426 ISA vid card. Zoooooooom...errrr....

I'm talking about WC1. I haven't played WC2 or 3 - yet. I tried WC1 on a Pentium II 400mhz and Pentium III 1.2ghz and it runs at warp speed, like taking an old fashioned movie projector and playing it at the fastest speed possible. It ran fine on the 486DX 33mhz I used to own though. Oddly other games from around that era (Wolfenstein 3D, Keen, Wacky Wheels etc.) all play fine on the higher end machines.

I got WC1 to play fine on my Dual core P4 by setting cycles to 8000 and core normal in DOSBOX.

oh yeah, Wing Commander 1 and 2 definitely have really bad problems with timing. Even with DOSBOX it's hard to make the game behave properly cuz different areas of the game can need different cycle speeds.

Have you tried CPUBurnin (to fully load the CPU)

If Not, i have just Googled. I am assuming you are running a Windows System, MoSlow will be a good idea.
http://www.hpaa.com/moslo/basic.asp

It will control the programs (or games) so that they do not run too fast. 😁

Heh I wish there was a Turbo button I could press off. Nice and simple.

I remember using an old utility called "Slowmo" in the past. I remember using it to play Themepark on my old P166 MMX as it just ran way too fast!! Then i got it for the Saturn.

You can play Wing Commander 1 on a 500MHz PC, provided you put in an 8-bit VGA card, preferrably one without memory FIFOs.